So how are you doing? I never really said anything but after reading your experience I kept thinking if this could happen to you this could happen to me. I immediately started a diet, and I have lost almost 10 pounds since. I just kept thinking I'm slowly killing myself and taking time away from my family. Anyways, I hope you are doing well and getting the help you need.

First, it's great to hear that you've taken steps to improve your health. If you need more motivation, just remember it's not just your health, but your psyche and your finances that could be impacted by this. Like rittchard said, I can't just go out and enjoy some things, not just even food and drink, but activities without worrying about carb intake and insulin.

I've typed out a wall of text rundown, includes more than just my health, but all of it is still a kind of fallout from my hospitalization:

Physically, all my numbers are a little bad, many are under or over their limits, most not by large amounts, but some are. It's only been a month and I've had 10 years of bad behavior to undue, so while I worry, I'm not freaking out. This includes the numbers for kidneys, pancreas, cholesterol, overall blood sugar over time, and I'm even anemic now which they're looking in to. I've got all sorts of new things to watch out for in my diet, where one problem wants me to eat less meat, the other says to eat less carbs. At this point if I followed them all perfectly I'd be eating nothing but veggies, which isn't going to happen. I still feel stronger, which is why the numbers surprised me.

Financially, I was approved for medi-cal, which is California's low/no income health care. It seems like they're covering all my hospital bills, which I'm not too guilty about since I've been paying state taxes for a long time and sometimes large amounts before my financial collapse.

However, medi-cal is also being very strange. Two weeks after I get a call that says I'm approved and that the main hospital bills are covered, I get a letter saying my medi-cal was not approved and is cancelled. Then, while at the clinic I have them check my card for my status and it says I do have medi-cal, but that I'm on yellow status which means it could go either way. My case worker won't return any calls, but it seems like he's doing what he can since I keep getting rejection letters for various other forms of subsidized health care, but I can't talk to him to figure out how to get my status on more solid ground. The latest I hear is my case worker/contacts is now the "SSA" which I'm assuming is a social security administration or something. I do know that all my clinic visits, labs, and medications are still being covered, so should be fine.

Worse, the recent turmoil in the stock markets has pretty much wiped half of my already small savings away. Even this recent rally at the end of this week brought back nothing. I've had to move back in with my obsessive compulsive, passive aggressive Asian mother in the family home, alongside my autistic aunt, and my delirious grandfather. But, I guess this takes care of one issue with my medi-cal, where they said I had too much property in my name. Well, that's not true anymore.

Which leads me to mentally, I'm mostly okay. I control what and how much I eat pretty well, although the new restrictions have me a little worried. I always allow myself one splurge a week, although sometimes it's not even a splurge. For example, I had a full scoop of really good ice cream at a local fancy shop after dinner last week. I could do so because I had a small dinner with no carbs in it, and I just walked long distance afterwards to burn off any extra carbs. It wasn't even a blip on my blood sugar readings.

I also look great, and not in an unhealthy, just out of the hospital skinny/sickly, kind of way. I have a jawline and the beginnings of defined cheekbones. I've been controlling my eating so much, and walking every day, that I've maintained a safe weight loss level every week. If it weren't for now living with parents, still being pretty sick, and almost broke, I'd have started dating again.

I'm moving my important things back home this weekend, including my primary computer, which will finally let me get back to working on my projects again. I even tentatively lined up some paying contract sculpting work using the work from my projects in my portfolio. I'll be doubling down on that same work and my usual projects to get some extra portfolio pieces that I can, hopefully, use to land an industry job and get some decent medical insurance, as well as enough to move out again and restart my life. I've had to shelve the tabletop miniatures game project i think I previewed here a while back, but with some of the contacts I've made now, when my life is stable enough I'll be able to get the miniatures game out a lot more quickly and smoothly than I ever could before.

Focusing on the work is a relief since I love doing it, and it's also part of a goal to get me out of this house again before my family drives me crazy. The problem with working on my own private projects with others, is that I can't show much of the work to employers. So I'm focusing on new stuff not project related so I'll have a professional level portfolio, hopefully, in 6 months or less.

The latest blood results worry and scare me, but it's only 1 month out and I think if I stick to the controlled plan, exercise a bit more to replace some lost muscle mass. I'll manage all this like I manage my eating. I'll adapt.